Reason, Montaigne says, directs that we should always go the same way, but not always at the same pace. A wise man may let passion hasten or slacken his speed without leaving the right path, and without turning into a motionless Colossus. Could virtue itself put on flesh and blood, the pulse would still beat faster going on to assault than going to dinner: she must heat and be moved. What startles him is another kind of stillness. Some great men, in the highest enterprises, keep so settled a calm that they do not break their sleep. Alexander, on the morning of his furious battle with Darius, slept so profoundly that Parmenio had to enter his chamber, come to his bedside, and call him several times by his name before the time to fight could get him up.
The Emperor Otho, having resolved to kill himself that night, settled his house, divided his money, sharpened the sword, and, waiting only to know his friends were safe, snored so that the gentlemen of his chamber heard him. Cato parallels that death. Ready to despatch himself, he stayed his hand until a messenger could say whether the senators were out from the Port of Utica, and they heard him snore in the next room; woken by a storm that kept the ships in harbour, he sent another man, composed himself in the bed again, and slept till the last return. The same Cato, facing Metellus's bid to call Pompey into the city, was to meet a tribune backed by the people, by Caesar, and by a rabble of slaves and gladiators. Friends passed the night without sleep, eating, or drinking. His wife and sisters wept in the house. He comforted them, supped as usual, and slept till a fellow-tribune roused him for the encounter. The rest of his life, Montaigne says, warrants reading that indifference as a soul too high to let the accident take more hold than an ordinary incident.
Augustus, just as the fight with Sextus Pompeius was to begin in Sicily, slept so fast that friends had to wake him to give the signal of battle. Mark Antony later called that a want of courage: he had not beheld his own squadrons with open eyes, and had not dared present himself until Agrippa brought news of the victory. Young Marius did much worse. After marshalling his army against Sylla and giving the word, he laid him down under a tree and slept so fast that the rout and flight of his men could hardly waken him; he had seen nothing of the fight. Labour and want of sleep had spent him; nature could hold out no longer. Physicians may now say whether our lives depend upon sleep. Perseus of Macedon, prisoner at Rome, was killed by being kept from it. Pliny names men who lived long without it. Herodotus speaks of nations that sleep and wake by half-years, and the life of Epimenides says he slept seven-and-fifty years together. The same closed eyes can look like a soul above accident, like a body that has given out, or like a riddle no physician has closed.
Coming Up in Chapter 45
Those who have no great kindness for Monsieur de Guise are willing to have him thought to blame at Dreux. He made a halt with his own forces while the Constable, general of the army, was racked through with the enemy's artillery, his battalion routed, and himself taken prisoner. Critics say he should have charged the flank rather than wait to fall upon the rear.
